


a notion deep inside

by kaiyen



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Homophobia, M/M, Post-War, hawkeye moves to boston so technically it's NOT a bj goes to maine fic but he does go that way, margaret/ofc AND peg/ofc but i shan't tag bc they're not focal x
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-19 05:35:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29745768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaiyen/pseuds/kaiyen
Summary: All of BJ’s letters sit in a draw in his desk. He reads them sometimes and remembers why he stopped writing back. They feel false, cheery in the way BJ used to write to Peg about the war. A story about a life Hawkeye has no place in.Maybe he’s not doing such a good job of moving on.or; two people meet at the wrong time and then re-meet at the right one
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 23
Kudos: 76





	1. reminders and reverberations

**Author's Note:**

> well. hi again <3 so basically this is me writing the same fic again but more long-winded and with more characters. also everything i mention about what potter, klinger and mulcahy are doing is from aftermash except in that mulcahy fully gets his hearing back which i ignored bc they magically healed his disability with an experimental surgery? insane. also forgive me for moving hawkeye i just wanted more ppl around x
> 
> i actually have warnings for this one. there's alcoholism, mental health issues, period-typical homophobia and reference in chapter 3 to a hate crime, repression etc. and parental issues. i don't think any of these are indulgent or too strong or anything and i hope you'll agree.
> 
> anyway, unbeta'd so please let me know if u spot any mistakes!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from korean bird paintings by tmg <3

Hawkeye always thought he would stay in Crabapple Cove his entire life. In Korea, he had longed for it, missed Maine more than he missed fresh fruit and hot showers. He remembers the feeling he had when Klinger gave him the magazine full of pictures. It was home.

Then, when he had come back, it wasn’t.

Hawkeye spent practically a whole year asleep in his childhood bedroom, homesick in the only place he’d ever loved. The realisation didn’t surprise him. His home is three thousand miles away, playing happy families with a wife and daughter.

Everything seemed grey and mundane, condemned to mediocrity despite his memories of their vibrance, like the photographs in Klinger’s magazine. Everyone looked at him like a stranger. No one understood, his father least of all, no matter how hard he tried. Tries still, over the phone and through his letters. He was the one who suggested moving back to Boston.

He moves to Boston two years after the end of the war. He gets a nice little apartment in the South End, a job in a free clinic – not Boston Mercy, however much he’d like to see Charles’ face if he did – and tries, finally, to move on.

He writes his new address on the back of a postcard and sends it to Mill Valley. It hasn’t been used, yet. Hawkeye hopes it’s a question of _yet_ , but he doesn’t blame BJ for not writing. After all, it was Hawkeye who didn’t reply to his previous five letters.

All of BJ’s letters sit in a draw in his desk. He reads them sometimes and remembers why he stopped writing back. They feel false, cheery in the way BJ used to write to Peg about the war. A story about a life Hawkeye has no place in.

Maybe he’s not doing such a good job of moving on.

Sometimes he thinks about calling, thinks that hearing BJ’s voice would offer him some peace of mind. He hates not knowing how he is. He hates loving him and not knowing anything about him anymore. He hates not knowing how Erin and Peg are, how their dog is.

He thinks maybe that is the final cruelty of the war for him, for all of them – penance perhaps – to have formed such a close bond with all these people and be expected to never see them again. He doesn’t know what his best friend’s house looks like, the one he built with his wife that they’d dreamt of for years. He doesn’t know how Colonel Potter’s grandchildren are, what animals Radar is keeping, whether Klinger ever saw Toledo again, even what country Father Mulcahy is in.

Hawkeye knows how Charles is, at least a little. He pays him a house visit on a Sunday morning, walks all the way from his apartment towards the neighbourhood by the Massachusetts State House, four months after he moves.

“Oh dear Lord, I thought I’d got rid of you,” Charles says as soon as he opens the door. He lets him in anyway.

“Well, you know me, no matter how hard you try, I’ll keep coming back,” he says. “Like herpes.”

“Don’t I know it,” he replies with that false grin of his.

They talk for hours – longer than Hawkeye can remember talking to anyone since getting back. They talk about the weather, about their jobs, about their friends. Charles has seen Margaret, and recently too, but hasn’t spoken to anyone else. He raises his eyebrow when Hawkeye tells him he has an apartment in the South End, as if he is assessing something. Hawkeye has a pretty good idea of what, seeing as he asks about BJ pretty soon after.

He tells him he hasn’t spoken to him in nearly two years. Hasn’t written to him in a year.

“Of all of us, I thought it’d be you two who stuck together,” Charles muses. “Did you have one of your spats?”

“No,” he replies and doesn’t elaborate.

Charles doesn’t press him. “You should call him.”

Hawkeye acknowledges this and makes a point to remember to ignore it.

When he leaves, Charles hands him a note. “Someone else you should see, while you’re here,” he tells him. He also suggests that Hawkeye should visit again, which comes across a little false because he says it with a face that was previously reserved for the mess tent’s eggs.

If he didn’t know better, he would say Charles is glad to see him.

He stands on the doorstep for a moment once the door closes, lets himself feel the bright winter sun. He unfolds the note – an address. He checks his watch before he heads off in the direction of the Waterfront. He picks up donuts on the way.

The walk is pleasant. Not as pleasant as the walks in Crabapple Cove by any means, but as cities go it’s nice. Sundays are quiet anyway and the smaller crowds and less traffic is a welcome change.

The address leads him to a building slightly nicer than his. The elevator is a lot nicer than his.

Hawkeye stands in front of apartment 3B, looking from the golden figures nailed onto the door, the B a little tilted, to Charles’ doctorly scrawl. _All those years of cursive lessons didn’t do him any good_ , he thinks as he refolds it back into his pocket. He rings the bell, and he can hear muted music playing behind the door.

“Margaret!” a voice shouts from inside. It’s feminine, and Hawkeye strains to hear it. “Can you get that?”

There are a couple of more words that Hawkeye can’t work out, before footsteps, and suddenly he’s face to face with one Margaret Houlihan.

She looks good. Slightly paler than he remembers her – there’s the Boston winter to blame for that – and her hair is slightly shorter, but it’s her. She looks softer somehow too, shoulders as confident as she ever was, but something light in her eyes.

Margaret stares at him in shock for a second. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s good to see you too,” he replies.

That must be enough for her because she pulls him into a tight hug straight afterwards. She jumps up a little to wrap her arms around his shoulders, and he slowly wraps his around her waist. He holds her close and savours it. He’s really missed her.

“Come in, come on,” she says as they pull apart. She keeps a hand on his back as she ushers him in and closes the door behind him. “Jean?” she calls. “We have company.” She turns to him. “Jean’s my roommate,” she tells him, pausing a little over the word _roommate_.

Margaret’s apartment is well-kept, as he would expect from her, but a level of organised mess permeates the open living room-diner. There’s a shelf stocked with books, much like his own, and the paintings hung on the wall are colourful and surprisingly bohemian-looking. A couple of plates are drying on the washboard, a couple of coffee cups sat and different angles on the table. Two people live here, he realises.

A woman – Jean – comes out from a door at the back of the room. She is taller than Margaret and shorter than him, with dark combed-back hair and shirt sleeves rolled up. She has brown skin and kind eyes.

She holds out her hand for him to shake. “Jean,” she introduces.

He takes it and grins. “Hawkeye.”

Her grip is strong, like she wants to show him up. He’s sure she could. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He gasps dramatically and holds a hand to his chest. “None of it’s true.”

“I’m sure,” she replies good-naturedly, glancing at Margaret with a playful look in her eyes, before looking back to him. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m just trying to fix our shower.”

“Of course,” Hawkeye says, waving her off. He watches Margaret as she watches Jean. Something warm glows inside him and he smiles. He’s happy for her – really happy. She deserves it and he suddenly doesn’t feel so lonely.

Margaret notices. “What?”

“Nothing,” he replies, “you look happy.”

“Oh,” she notes, looking down with a quiet smile. “Come on, I’ll make you some coffee.”

They go to the kitchen and he sits at the table as she makes a pot. He tries not to seem too nosey as he looks around the room as she does. “Nice place. Why’d you pick Boston?”

She places a mug of coffee in front of him and shrugs. “I have an uncle on the board at Boston Mercy. It seemed as good a place as any.”

“You work with Charles?” Hawkeye asks. He takes a sip of his coffee as Margaret drinks hers. It’s a damn sight better than the last coffee they shared.

“Come on, he’s not that bad,” she says before pausing. “And we don’t see each other that often, it’s a big hospital.” She smiles. “What about you? Why Boston?”

“Seemed as good a place as any,” he says. Margaret gives him a long-suffering look. “I did my residency here.”

“You know, Trapper lives here,” she points out like he doesn’t know.

He nods. “I know.”

She crosses her arms. “Did you think about that?”

“No,” he says. Hawkeye doesn’t think about Trapper so much anymore. It’s an old wound. He doesn’t want to search him out – thinks perhaps it would be unkind to – and if he runs into him by accident, he thinks they’ll go for a drink and never see each other again.

Margaret doesn’t press the issue. “The way you talk about Maine, I never thought you’d leave it,” she remarks, not harshly. “What did your father think?”

“My father is the one who told me to go,” he replies. “I think he was worried seeing as I spent most of 1954 marinating in my bed. I think I was growing fungus by the end of it.”

It’s meant in jest, but Margaret doesn’t laugh. She looks at him with concern, but nods in a way that he realises is meant to encourage him to continue.

“I was just so tired,” he explains. “I thought I just needed a full night’s sleep, a comfortable bed, but it’s more than that. It was bone-deep.”

Margaret places a hand over his.

“I tried to work at my dad’s practice, but everything just felt so…pointless. Like I was 11-years-old and my dad was finding things to keep me occupied on summer vacation.”

“How are you now?”

“Better,” he replies. He smiles and tries to mean it. “Really.”

They talk some more, the conversation going a similar way to the one he had with Charles. About their friends and their jobs. Hawkeye learns that Margaret has been writing Colonel Potter since they came home and has plans to visit him in Missouri next year. She recounts what he’s been up to, which answers some of Hawkeye’s questions.

“He’s semi-retired now, but he’s the administrator at General Pershing’s,” she tells him. “Klinger’s there too. He’s got a kid on the way. And Father Mulcahy too.”

“Father Mulcahy has a kid on the way?”

She bats at his hand. “ _No_ ,” she emphasises. She sobers. “Did you know he’s partially deaf?”

Hawkeye frowns. “What?”

“There was a barrage on camp,” Margaret says, “while you were…away.” Hawkeye almost rolls his eyes at her vagueness. “He ran out into the middle of it to free the prisoners. Shell exploded nearby and knocked him out. Almost completely deaf when he woke up.”

Hawkeye can feel his face contort into a horrified expression.

“He’s doing a little better now,” she continues. “Potter put him in for some experimental procedure which did some good, but there’s only so much you can do.”

“How’s God meant to hear you when the priest can’t?” he tries weakly.

“Hawkeye,” she scolds.

He nods. He knows. “How come we didn’t notice?”

“BJ helped him keep it quiet.”

At BJ’s name he feels his stomach drop. He hopes it doesn’t show.

“How is BJ?” she asks him.

Hawkeye swallows around the lump in his throat. “I don’t know,” he admits.

Margaret looks surprised. Confused. “You don’t?”

“Nope,” he says tightly. “We haven’t written in a long time.”

“Why?”

That is the big question, Hawkeye thinks. He shrugs. “I felt like he wasn’t- I don’t know, wasn’t _him_ in his letters. He sounded different.” He thinks for a moment and is quiet. Margaret simply waits. “There I was, struggling to fit back into normal life after all of Korea and it sounded like he never left Mill Valley in the first place. As if what we went through did nothing to him.”

She nods. “I’m sure that’s not true,” she says softly.

“Me too!” he agrees, gesturing with his hand. “But why couldn’t he tell me that?”

“Could you call him?”

He shakes his head. “I feel like I’d be…intruding.” Margaret tilts her head a little. “I mean, if he wants his old life back, where am I meant to fit into that?”

Margaret still sits quietly. After a moment, she clears her voice. “I want to ask you something,” she starts, folding her hands in front of her and leaning forward. She looks serious. “And I don’t want you to joke, please, or think I’m-” she screws her face up a little, “insulting you.”

He straightens up. “I’m frightened,” he jokes.

She glares before she takes a breath. “Are you in love with him?”

“Yes,” he admits freely with resignation and a sad smile.

She nods like she knew already. “Talk to him,” she says. “Call him. Write him. Anything. Please, Hawkeye.” Margaret takes both of his hands in hers. “Both of you deserve that.”

Jean re-enters the room then, and Margaret’s hands slip from his. “Sorry to intrude,” she says. “It’s getting late. Are you staying for dinner?”

Margaret looks at him quickly, like she’s about to offer.

“No, I really should be getting back,” Hawkeye says as he stands. He didn’t realise they had been talking for so long. “Thank you, Margaret. Really.” He glances to Jean. “It was good to meet you, Jean.”

Jean nods as she clears up his and Margaret’s mugs. Margaret gets up to follow him to the door and casually kisses her cheek. Jean blushes and glances briefly to Hawkeye.

Hawkeye smiles. He smiles at the fact his friend has finally found some happiness. He smiles at her openness, at the simple display of her letting him know she trusts him.

As he leaves, Margaret says, “Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t,” he replies, and means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me be like .. [gives margaret a butch girlfriend]


	2. constantly in the darkness, where's that at?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so i thought i'd post again quickly bc i have like 3 chapters written anyway and basically nothing has happened yet skjdks. also happy gfa day
> 
> for a beej girl i rlly am leaving him out so far.. he's there in the next one x but peg time
> 
> chapter title is from a case of you by joni mitchell. lmk if u see any errors!

Hawkeye gets back to his apartment and doesn’t call BJ. He thinks about it for a good while, staring at his phone, but he doesn’t. He thinks that if he calls, for the first time in his life he wouldn’t be able to find the words. He’s not going to let Margaret down, he resolves, and pulls a wad of paper and a pen from his desk. He pours a glass of scotch and downs it. He pours another to set down in front of him.

 _Dear BJ,_ he starts.

He crosses it out and scrunches the paper up.

 _Dear Beej,_ he starts again.

He scribbles over it and tosses it on the floor.

 _Dear Dr. Hunnicutt,_ he writes, just because he can.

He gets a papercut as he crumples the sheet. He hisses, putting his finger in his mouth as he stands and collects the discarded pieces of paper and puts them in the trash.

 _Dear BJ,_ he rewrites.

Hawkeye stares at it and puts the pen down. He sighs and rubs his eyes.

On a whim, he picks up his phone and dials. He winces as he does it, and his voice sounds far away as he speaks to the operator. It rings. It rings enough times that Hawkeye thinks no one is there and he starts to relax. A tell-tale click makes him sit up straight.

“Hello?” The voice isn’t BJ’s. For starters, it’s a woman.

He feels like his heart might stop. “Peg?”

She pauses. “Who’s this?”

“Hawkeye,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. Peg is quiet for a moment – if it is Peg, maybe he’s got the wrong number, maybe they’ve moved and didn’t tell him, maybe–

“Hey, Hawkeye,” Peg says. She sounds surprised and welcoming in a way Hawkeye hadn’t expected. “I was wondering if I’d hear your voice again.”

He clenches his hand around the handset. He feels guilt brewing in his stomach. How dare he? How dare he call BJ’s wife and ask her to hand the phone to her husband so he can, what, throw a spanner in the works? Confess his love to him?

“You still there, Hawk?”

“Yeah,” he says quickly, voice weak. He clears his throat. “Yeah, I’m still here. Is Beej there?”

“I’m sorry, he’s at work,” she says. She sounds genuinely remorseful.

Hawkeye doesn’t feel upset – he feels relieved. “Oh, that’s okay. Sorry I bothered you.”

“Don’t be silly, Hawk!” his nickname sounds natural in her mouth. He wonders if BJ talks about him.

“How are you?” he asks, realising he has possibly been a little rude. “How’s Erin? What is she, four now?”

There’s the sound of a child shouting in the background. “I’m okay, thank you. Yes, Erin’s coming up on four-and-a-half now, as she likes to remind us,” she says, voice full of pride in her daughter. “She can use a fork now.”

“A fork!” Hawkeye repeats loudly. “I haven’t even got that far yet.”

Peg laughs. Hawkeye doesn’t think it’s genuine and it makes him smile. “Wait,” she says after a second. “What was it you called to say?”

“Oh, uh,” he stalls, “I just wanted to ask if BJ got my note. That I’ve moved to-”

“Boston?” she interrupts.

“How do you know that?”

She laughs. “He got it, I saw. Unless it’s your idea of a joke, I figured you wouldn’t be sending a postcard from Boston if you’d moved to say, Portland.”

Hawkeye can’t help but feel disheartened at that – that BJ knows and hasn’t written or called at all – though he supposes he shouldn’t blame BJ for it. He realises he’s been quiet for a little too long. “Oh, okay,” he says. “Thanks.”

“Hawkeye,” she says softly, apologetically, and he wonders if he sounded disappointed. “He’s been working a lot, we’ve been dealing with some things at home, I’m sure he’s just been busy.”

“No, I get it,” he replies. He longs to pry but he doesn’t.

“Why the move? From what BJ’s said I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever leave Maine,” she says. “He was looking forward to seeing, what was it? Crabapple-”

“Crabapple Cove, yes,” he confirms, and his heart aches. The idea that BJ had wanted to visit makes his stomach churn.

Peg repeats her question, “So why did you leave?”

It didn’t feel like home anymore. He wonders if it was childhood nostalgia or something else entirely. “Got tired of all the seafood,” he replies.

“And you went to Boston for that?” Peg replies, and Hawkeye can hear the smile in her voice. He remembers that he likes Peg and feels even worse about one of the reasons he called. “Needed a change of scenery?”

Hawkeye lets out a slow breath. “Something like that.”

She is quiet for a moment and Hawkeye can almost hear her weigh up asking. “How are you doing, Hawkeye?”

“I’m alright,” he replies. He’s been worse. “Better than I was in Crabapple Cove.”

Peg seems to consider this and Hawkeye thinks she understands. She makes an affirmative noise. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Hawkeye’s heard it plenty of times since the war – from his father, from his childhood friends, from his neighbours. Hearing Peg say it is the first time he feels like it comes from someone who understands what they’re apologising for.

Peg stays quiet on the line.

“How’s-” he hesitates. “How’s Beej?”

“He’s okay,” she says. “I think. You know what he’s like – he bottles everything up. Sometimes I can’t tell.”

He takes a sip of his drink.

“I think he’s angry,” Peg says, like she’s confiding something personal. “He doesn’t act like it and he’s still great with me and Erin, but it’s always kind of there, I can see it. And I don’t think it’s about me, even though I-” she seems to realise something then and cuts herself off. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“It’s okay,” he reassures quietly. BJ had always seemed to have a simmering rage beneath the straight-laced façade. Hawkeye has to admit, he gets it. Every time he thinks of the destruction that the war caused. The children, the women, the old men, the 18-year-olds brainwashed and shipped off into serving a country that would abandon them as soon as they returned to it – he feels rage.

“I’ll tell BJ you called. He’ll be sorry he missed you.” She pauses. “ _I’m_ sorry he missed you.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Thank you, Peg.”

“Look after yourself, won’t you, Hawkeye?” she says gently. “Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

Hawkeye hangs up the phone and hits his head on his desk. He takes a deep breath before he sits back up and picks up his pen.

He starts the letter by saying that he called Peg. He apologises for interrupting her day, and for what he’ll be doing to the both of them in this letter. He continues it by catching BJ up on the rest of the 4077 and everything he’s learnt from Margaret, though he skirts the truth about her roommate. He talks a little about Boston, about his move and why he had to go. He remembers how he hated BJ’s storybook letters and tries to keep it as upbeat as possible without slipping into fiction. He struggles.

_Peg mentioned you’d like to see Crabapple Cove. I’d love to take you, if you’ll still let me. I didn’t leave because I no longer loved it – it just wasn’t how I imagined it in my head. I think I remembered being a kid there more than being an adult._

_I’m sorry_ , he writes again, this time for his distance and BJ’s unanswered letters. _I suppose it would either be you or me who stopped writing first, and I’m sorry that it was me. And after all the schtick I gave you in Korea over goodbyes!_

He doesn’t write more on it, doesn’t want to dedicate more of the letter to it than he needs. He still feels upset about BJ’s letters, how they felt like lies, but a one-sided letter doesn’t seem like the right way to discuss it. If BJ ever wants to talk to him at all after this, then they can deal with it then.

He debates whether to put it in. He rambles on more for a couple more pages about his job and about his hopes for how BJ is getting on while he decides whether to write anything at all. After all, Margaret had only advised him to _talk_ to BJ.

It’s probably not the time. Then again, when will be? He’s held onto this for four years. Before, he’d been worried about losing BJ if he told him. Hawkeye feels like he’s already lost him. There doesn’t seem like there’s anything to lose.

 _What I mean to say is– I love you,_ he writes. It scares him to put it on the page – a page BJ will see. _I love you so hopelessly that my hands shake as I write this. I’m meant to be a surgeon, what does that say about me?_

Hawkeye doesn’t apologise for that. He’s never been one to be ashamed of his feelings in such a way, and though he feels guilty about wanting to disrupt BJ’s perfect marriage, none of it is shame.

He signs it, _Always, Hawkeye_ , seals it in an envelope and scrawls the Hunnicutts’ address on the envelope. He rushes out to the blue mailbox outside before he can chicken out.

Once he heads back into his apartment, he drinks his entire bottle of scotch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!! i rlly appreciate ur thoughts etc. hopefully i'll have the next one up tomorrow or the day after :)


	3. how tomorrow could ever follow today

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi :-) honestly i'm writing this quickly and wld rather it be up and finished so I'll probs try and post a chapter a day
> 
> again please let me know if there are any mistakes seeing as this is unbeta'd!
> 
> warnings re: a loosely referenced hate crime, daddy issues and serious internalised homophobia in this chapter. i do hope i handled it ok as a lesbian growing up in a small town but i did have the benefit of it you know. not being the 1930s and 40s. 
> 
> title is from led zeppelin's going to california

BJ wonders if this is how it’s meant to feel.

He tries to slot back into life in Mill Valley – a jigsaw piece from another puzzle jammed into a place it doesn’t belong. For a while, he succeeds in pretending that he managed it. Peg tries her best to ignore that her husband behaves like he’s giving a performance in a play rather than being an actual husband, and in return, he ignores that they don’t make love anymore and she spends more time with some bachelorette – _Marie_ – from work than with him.

BJ goes to work, picks up extra shifts to fill the time he used to spend working on motorbikes or drinking with friends. He tries, tries so hard – to be a good father to Erin. He takes her to the park whenever he can, plays with her and Waggles in the garden – though Waggles can’t run like he used to when they got him, he still brings the ball back to Erin with excitement – and reads her _Last of the Mohicans_ before bed.

He tries to make it work. He does a good job of it, at least for about eighteen months.

Sometimes BJ feels like the war was more real to him than his home. It’s not a new feeling; he felt it while he was there too, especially towards the end. He used to think it was because he could only experience home through Peg’s words, written more like a storybook than a testimony. Maybe though, that’s not quite true. BJ’s barely sure it was real in the first place.

Sometimes he feels like home was only a story he told himself at night to get to sleep.

He speaks to his old friends, the ones he made in college around the time he met Peg, and none of them even so much as touch him beyond a handshake. He remembers Hawkeye’s hands in his, his head on Hawkeye’s shoulder, hugs so tight it felt like they were going to pass right through to the other side of each other. BJ wonders why it is men only condone touching each other when surrounded by war. He wonders why he misses it so much.

His old friends aren’t even good friends. He realises that now he knows what good friends are like. They’re the same lot that spawned Leo Bardonaro, a man BJ has since become disillusioned by. He used to think the sun shone out of that guy’s ass.

At first, BJ had compared Hawkeye to Leo. BJ had liked Leo right away too. He was funny and charming and the only man he’s ever known to wear bigger shoes than him. He soon realised that it was perhaps an unfair comparison. Hawkeye and Leo’s shared qualities begin and end in practical jokes – Leo could be cruel. Hawkeye never was, mean sometimes, but not to anyone who didn’t deserve it.

God, BJ misses him.

He misses him from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep. He didn’t even feel that way about Peg, and that’s what hurts so much.

Everyone in Mill Valley seems to be trying to out-perform each other for All-American Family of the Year. They stage cook-outs, dinner parties, plaster on two-dimensional smiles that no person should be able to muster sincerely. BJ hates how angry it makes him. He was never this angry before the war.

Hawkeye was real. BJ knows Hawk had a tendency to hide his fear, his sadness, with bravado and suppress the things that upset him, but he was a lot more authentic than BJ. Hawkeye didn’t – doesn’t – do anything by half – he feels strongly, laughs loudly, cares deeply. BJ suppresses every strong feeling he ever has. Or at least he used to.

When Erin was born, he had wanted to cry. Sat on Peg’s hospital bed as she held her, Erin’s tiny hand grasping his index finger, he held back his tears.

Something about the war – or something about Hawkeye – made him feel sharper. Hawkeye made _him_ care deeply. He’s spent more than one night lying awake feeling guilty that sometimes he feels more sharply for Hawkeye than he does his wife. He feels like he is finally living in three dimensions, with joy and misery and rage and everything he never let himself feel before.

He isn’t sure he likes it.

Both he and Peg drink more than they did before. BJ thinks he drinks less than he did during the war, but that’s hardly a healthy benchmark. Whenever they split a bottle of cheap gin, he thinks of Hawkeye. As he watches Peg drink, he feels guilty.

BJ would prefer if he and Peg argued, but they don’t.

They barely talk. BJ hates it, hates how he can no longer seem to find the words for anything. Some men went to Korea and lost their legs, he went and lost himself.

He knows that they stick together because of Erin. He knows that their friends, the other families from Erin’s day-care and their friends from college who popped out a couple of kids around the same time, know something is up. After all, they should have another child by now by conventional standards. Before any of this, BJ had it all mapped out in his head.

He remembers when Hawkeye made him vow to write nice cheery letters home and to think of Peg often. He does the same to Hawkeye.

It feels ingenuine, but from the way Hawkeye writes – starting strong when they first got back and gradually declining into what can only be described as disjointed nonsense – he doesn’t need someone else’s problems as well. He tries to tell himself Hawkeye sounds like that because he’s working so hard, like he always did. He can’t bear to consider the alternative, to remember what it was like to see Hawkeye in that asylum. He doesn’t want to bother him. After all, as Hawkeye loves to remind him, he’s finally supposed to be happy.

When Hawkeye stops replying, he isn’t surprised.

Maybe a better friend would visit him. BJ worries that he wouldn’t come back.

He writes a few more letters that go unanswered, and it briefly crosses his mind that Hawkeye could be dead. The thought strikes while he’s at work. He’s working up to getting his own practice, busy earning a living at the local ER. It bothers him all day.

When he gets home, for the second time since the war ended, he calls the Pierce household. He talks to Daniel Pierce, who confirms that Hawkeye is indeed still alive, and nothing more.

It doesn’t particularly resolve anything. He doesn’t talk about it with Peg. They used to share everything. The dull ache of the knowledge Hawkeye is choosing not to write grows over time like a tumour.

Peg is so patient with him. He doesn’t know how she manages it. He does love her – he loves her like his best friend. After all, before she was his wife, that’s what she was. He thought that was enough, but it seems now that maybe it’s not.

He _knows_.

He knows that he has certain feelings for Hawkeye Pierce that go – to put it lightly – beyond friendship. The thought – the enormity of it – chokes him sometimes, catches him in the throat and takes his breath away.

BJ wonders why he is how he is. Wonders how he knows his wife is the same way.

BJ wonders if Peg will ever leave him or if he’ll take her down with him. So he asks her.

She just sighs. “How much have you had to drink?”

He shakes his head. For once, he’s sober. He can’t be bothered to hide how sombre he feels. BJ feels like his mouth is full of cotton. “What’s stopping you from living with Marie?”

Peg looks at him with wide eyes for a moment – as if she didn’t realise he knew – before she composes herself. “The fact you can’t look after yourself right now.” It’s kind. The words are cruel but she says them in that understanding, placating voice of hers and he nods. She presses a kiss to his temple and he brings an arm up around her.

“I’m sorry Peg,” he murmurs.

She strokes his hair. “I know,” she hushes.

Hawkeye sends him a postcard from Boston of all places. Leaving Maine means something big for Hawkeye. BJ wishes he knew what it was, what he missed. Boston makes him think about Charles. It makes him think about _Trapper_.

He thinks – thinks, knows, assumes – there was something between Hawkeye and Trapper. Hawkeye never tells him. The thought comes every so often, blazing like heartburn. Abstractly, it doesn’t bother him. It bothers him that it was Hawkeye, and it was Trapper, and it was Hawkeye and Trapper. He used to hate that Hawkeye had a life before him. A life after him.

BJ wonders if they’ve reconnected. Wonders if Trapper gets to keep his wife and family and Hawkeye. He lets Hawkeye’s postcard get buried under paperwork and forgotten. He doesn’t forgive himself for it.

Around four months after he got the postcard, he gets home after a 20-hour shift to find Peg sat in their kitchen, waiting for him.

This is what he’s been waiting for, and he waits for her to speak. Waits for her to tell him she’s leaving, or she knows about him, or something else world-ending.

“Hawkeye called today,” she says instead.

He finds himself frowning. “Why?”

“He wanted to know if you got his new address,” Peg tells him.

BJ swallows. “Oh,” he says weakly.

“Sit down, BJ, please,” she asks. He does, and she reaches across the table to take one of his hands in both of hers. “You should at least write him. Even better, go see him.”

“He stopped writing first,” he attempts weakly. Tries the excuse that he’s been making for himself since he got the postcard. She doesn’t buy it. “I can’t do that, Peg,” he says instead.

“Why?”

He smiles humourlessly. “You know why.” He’s sure she must know.

Peg nods. “I think you need to say it, BJ.”

“I-” he starts and stops. He steels himself. “I love him,” he says, and it takes more effort to dredge it out of his lungs than anything he’s ever said before. “How am I meant to put that onto paper when I can’t even say it to myself?”

She holds his hand tighter. “Why can’t you say it?”

“How can I say it when I can barely even _think_ it?” BJ asks her. He pauses for a long moment. “That’s not who I-” He cuts himself off.

“Who you what?” she prompts gently.

“When I was a kid, my old man took me out on a walk. I didn’t really…I didn’t think anything of it,” he tells her. “We went out of town for a good while. There were these-” he clears his throat. “There were a couple of guys who lived in this little house on the edge of town. Unmarried. And everyone knew they never would be,” he says. “It was painted red. I used to like it.”

Peg nods as he speaks. Keeps holding his hand.

“The day he took me out to see it, it was black. Burnt,” he continues. “He told me they were still in there, but you could see right through it – it was just a skeleton of a building. He said that- that was where they belonged. In the ashes.”

“Oh, BJ,” she murmurs.

BJ shakes his head. “He told me after- he looked right at me, and he said, _You see what happens to people like that?_ ” He takes a deep breath. “I wondered why he did that for years. Whether he saw…something in me.”

Peg lets go of his hand. She stands up and rounds the table, before she wraps her arms around him and pulls him forward against her front. “It’s not all like that, I promise you, BJ.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “I know that.” He doesn’t have an issue with it abstractly – but it’s him, and he’s spent half his life trying to prove his father wrong.

After a moment, she pulls back and forces him to look up at her. “I want you to meet Marie,” she says. “And then I want you to see Hawkeye.”

He nods, and it’s exactly what they do.

The next day, they hire a sitter for Erin, and Peg takes him to Marie’s house. He feels like a kid going to the principal’s office. In the car, he taps a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel.

They pull up to Marie’s house. It’s modest, but impressive for a single woman to afford. BJ supposes Marie must work for the government or something similar, and is vaguely aware that whatever is going on between her and Peg would get her fired.

Marie is no-nonsense, with shoulder-length blonde hair and round glasses that frame her face. She works for the District Attorney and makes jokes that make Peg snort with laughter. She has two cats and is a closet communist. BJ likes her immediately.

It takes a little while for him to feel welcome, but after a little while, it’s easy. BJ laughs more than he has in years.

Marie is in love with Peg. He can tell from the way she looks at her like she hung the moon. She blushes when Peg touches her. Her eyes sparkle whenever Peg laughs at one of her jokes. And Peg loves her back, he knows that too.

Most men aren’t particularly happy to find out their wife is in love with someone else, but BJ isn’t most men. He’s glad she’s happy.

They leave together at the end of the night. He hadn’t been sure whether Peg would come home with him, but she does. Marie hands BJ his coat and kisses his wife squarely on the lips. As they step out the house, Peg loops her arm in BJ’s as they head to the car.

“It’s worth it,” she promises him.

He believes her.

He feels more like himself than he has in years.

They spend the next couple of weeks pottering around the house, enjoying each other’s company like they both know what’s coming. BJ feels like something has clicked inside of him, and while it still turns his stomach sometimes, he feels more normal seeing Peg so happy.

“Do you think he loves you?” Peg asks as they lie in bed one night.

He stares at the ceiling. “I don’t know.” He taps a hand on his chest. “Maybe.”

She turns to look at him. He feels like he’s twelve-years-old at a sleepover, talking about crushes with his best friend. “Do you think he’s interested?” she asks. “In…you know.”

“Yes,” he answers with a smile.

There had always been something about Hawkeye that was a little odd, and BJ could tell from the start. If BJ had been a little more like his father, he would call it queer. If he were a lot more like him, maybe they’d never have been friends in the first place. BJ is once again glad of the fact he has made a point to be nothing like his father.

In the beginning, he had thought it was an act. Most of it was, he’s sure – a good portion seemed self-destructive, with Hawk’s insistence of propositioning most of the generals who came through. But BJ saw Hawkeye sneak off with the odd corpsman among the many nurses. He’d gotten over it pretty quickly, and found it somehow comforting. He guesses he knows why now.

Peg is still looking at him, smiling with him like she wants him to continue.

“I don’t think he knew I knew,” he says. “He used to have this reputation with the nurses – a lot it was more fiction than fact, mind you – but sometimes I’d see him traipsing off with some soldier.”

She grins.

BJ sobers a little. “I used to worry about him,” he says. “If I noticed, then someone else must have. But I think I must have watched him a lot more closely than anyone else did.”

Peg kisses him on the forehead. “Goodnight, BJ.”

He dreams. He dreams a lot these days, most of them bad, but this one is peaceful.

When BJ was in high school, he took a girl called Annie Carter to prom. They had English together, and BJ’s friends made fun of her, but he liked her a lot. It never went anywhere – she got sick from the punch and they had gone out to get some air. Sat on the bleachers together and talked as she lit a cigarette and he wrapped his letterman jacket around her shoulders. Later, she had laid her head in his lap and fallen asleep. BJ dropped her off before curfew and got a full night’s sleep.

That night, BJ dreams about Hawkeye’s head in his lap on the bleachers with his jacket wrapped around his bony shoulders.

When he wakes, it’s early, but Peg has already gone downstairs. He remembers he doesn’t have work. The sun drifts in through their pale curtains and he heads downstairs.

Peg is watching Erin eat messily in the kitchen, trying to stabilise her hand as she tosses her cereal around with her spoon. She looks up to him with a bright smile and pushes forward an envelope across the table. It’s a little battered, but he recognises the scrawl on the envelope right away – Hawkeye’s.

He grabs it. It’s thick in his hands – the letter is long, more than just a couple of pages. He opens it and places the envelope down. BJ leans against the counter as he reads it, as fast as he can without missing a single word.

It sounds a lot better than Hawkeye’s last letter – coherent, at least, though it still seems rushed, but then again, that is how Hawk has always been. Hawkeye talks about Margaret, about how everyone else in the company is getting on from what he’s heard, and crucially, he apologises. BJ forgives him instantly.

Hawk talks a little about his move, and BJ knows it must have been bad, however vague it comes across.

 _What I mean to say is– I love you,_ Hawkeye writes. BJ freezes. He rubs his thumb over the indentations from Hawk’s pen. _I love you_ , and BJ feels tears pool in his eyes and a grin pull at his lips. BJ feels tension seep away from somewhere deep inside of him, and knows then that Peg was right – it’s worth it.

BJ finishes reading it, and however much he wants to re-read it immediately, he hands it over to Peg. He sits and watches her as she does. When she finishes, she digs out the number for the airline and begins booking him a flight – asking for any cancellations – as he uses the phone in the office to call work and cash in some of his accrued holiday.

He packs quickly, everything shoved into a suitcase he hasn’t used since Korea. He kisses Erin on both her chubby cheeks and promises her he’ll be back. He pets Waggles on the head. Before he leaves, Peg hugs him tightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok reunion next chapter i prommy (different way of saying promise) probably tomorrow :)


	4. when sundown pales the sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok well i lied im posting it now bc i won't have time tonight
> 
> chapter title from catch the wind by donovan

Hawkeye wakes up the morning after he sends the letter with a pounding head. It’s early – the sun hasn’t risen, but he doesn’t think he’ll be going back to sleep. He remembers the letter and sits up suddenly. It startles a grumble out of him and he presses a hand to his forehead and lies back down.

It crosses his mind to shove his hand in the mailbox and get it back. He thinks if he stands up he’ll be sick, not just because of his raging hangover. He tries his best to put it to the back of his mind and forget about it. He’s never been very good at doing that consciously.

That sets the standard for his next few days.

Hawkeye loves his work – it’s part of his very identity, and he wouldn’t change that for anything – but there’s only so much it can do in taking his mind of BJ. Any tall man in a white coat reminds him of him, and working in a hospital, there are a lot of them.

He tells Margaret. It feels good to be able to speak to someone so openly and she seems glad to listen. She’s a great listener – better than she used to be when she was still slumming it with Frank – but sometimes he misses Sidney.

Margaret offers false platitudes. She’s trying to help and for a while it does, but Sidney used to do this thing where he never would. He’d agree with whatever you said and somehow managed to drag everything into the open by making you do it for him.

His mother was the same. She had this natural disposition about her that always made him feel at ease. He thinks that’s the way mothers are meant to be but so rarely are. He misses her too, though the wound of her loss has faded to an ache. He misses her arms wrapped around him, the way she made challah – with honey and sesame – and the sound of her singing through an open window as he got back from school.

Hawkeye wonders if the pain he feels when he thinks of BJ will fade to the same dull throb.

Two weeks later, he finds himself staring out the window again with a glass of gin in his hand. The rain pours down the glass, muddling the street lights. The moon is bright in the starless sky. The radio fuzzes gently, not quite tuned into the station.

The phone rings, and he walks over and answers.

“Are you moping?” Margaret says before he can even say _Hello_.

“How did you know?” he replies, placing his drink on the table. “Margaret, it’s late.” Around 10 p.m.

There are voices in the background, Hawkeye can make out at least three. “Because you’re meant to be here!” She sounds reprimanding, but he thinks she might be tipsy.

“What?”

“You said you’d come swap books with me!” she says.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, _oh shit_. “That was tonight?” He knows it was – he can see where he placed the dog-eared copy of _The Price of Salt_ near the door.

“Fink!” she tells him. There’s a laugh in the background.

“You sound like you’re having fun,” he notes, smiling.

Margaret says something to someone there with her. He can’t make it out. “We’re playing poker.”

He leans against the wall. “What are you calling me for, then?”

“I’m out,” she grumbles.

“Ah, I see your luck is the same as it ever was,” he replies. “Do you want me to lend you some money?”

“No!” Margaret says. “If I wanted money I’d have called Charles.”

Hawkeye laughs.

“I wanted to check-in.”

“Check-in?”

She sighs. “See if you were okay! You didn’t show up when you said you would and I was worried.”

“Oh,” he replies. “Thank you Margaret, that’s nice.” It is.

“Well, don’t go spreading it around.”

There’s a knock on his door and it makes him jump.

“When are you coming back over?” she asks him.

He stares at the door. “Soon. I don’t know. Listen Margaret, I have to-”

“It better be soon,” she tells him, “I was relying on getting that book from you. Now I’m going to have to do the crossword.”

“I’m very sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry you have to go through such hardship.” Whoever is at the door knocks again. “Listen, listen, Margaret,” he says before she can reply again. “I gotta go, someone’s at the door.”

“Fine, fine!” she replies, exasperated. “Call me back soon and let me know when you’ll be over, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies. “See you soon.”

“Goodbye, Hawkeye.” She hangs up.

He puts the phone back on the hook and goes to the door. He opens it without a thought.

Hawkeye opens the door, blanches and closes it again immediately. He opens it again a moment later.

It’s BJ.

BJ, all California tan and cheesy moustache, standing in the hallway with a suitcase in his hand. Hawkeye stares, tries to memorise his face once more even though it is already seared into his mind. He looks nervous, Hawkeye notes.

“Howdy stranger,” BJ says, voice filled with emotion, and his face splits into a grin.

Hawkeye wastes no time pulling him in, both into his apartment and into his arms, one over his shoulder and one around his waist, into a tight embrace. BJ drops his suitcase and does the same. Hawkeye finds himself mumbling a litany of apologies, and he can hear BJ doing the same. For everything and for nothing at all.

When they part, BJ looks wrecked – overjoyed and devastated. “I should have come sooner,” he says roughly.

Hawkeye takes BJ’s hand to hold it in his own, with both hands like something precious. “I should have written back,” he replies to absolve BJ. He drops his hand reluctantly so that he can shut the door. He glances at BJ’s suitcase.

“I- I came straight from the airport,” BJ says, “I haven’t got a hotel or anything, I don’t- it’s okay if you don’t-”

Hawkeye cuts him off immediately. “Of course you can stay, Beej,” he replies softly. “As long as you like.”

BJ nods as if affirming something to himself.

“Bunking together. It’ll be just like old times,” he says weakly. He doesn’t know why BJ has come. He doesn’t know anything, really.

“I got your letter,” BJ says. “It arrived this morning.”

He feels tight in his chest. BJ got his letter this morning and now he stands in front of him in his living room. It’s almost unbelievable. He feels like he is dreaming.

“I’ve got two weeks off work,” he continues. He looks like every word is a struggle. “Your letter came and I rang up straight away. Said there was a family emergency,” he says, smiles a little to himself. “Peg booked the plane ticket. Got a cancellation.”

“Peg?” he repeats dumbly.

“Peg is-” BJ starts. “Peg-” He holds his hands loosely, fingers splayed like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He looks up at Hawkeye. “Can we sit down?”

Hawkeye bursts into action. “Yes! Yes, of course,” he says, ushering BJ towards his couch. “Would you like a drink? I have some scotch that’s way better than what we used to drink.”

BJ seems to consider it. He seems to consider it for a long moment. “No,” he replies quietly. “Thank you. Will you sit down?”

He sits immediately, obediently, at the other end of the couch and tries not to bounce his leg.

“I let Peg read your letter, I hope that’s alright,” he says.

Hawkeye had expected as much. “And she booked your flight after that?”

He nods. “She told me I needed to see you after you rang. I think she did it so I wouldn’t chicken out.”

“Peg wants you to see me? After that?”

BJ knows what he’s getting at. He can tell. “Peg and I aren’t…we haven’t been husband and wife in any way other than on paper for a long time now.”

“I’m sorry,” Hawkeye says. He means it.

“It’s okay,” he replies. “Peg and I understand each other perfectly well. She’s been seeing someone, actually. I’ve met her and I like her.”

Hawkeye can’t seem to piece it together in his brain. _Her_. “Seeing someone? Like a psychiatrist?”

BJ laughs – actually laughs at something Hawkeye has said and he can _hear_ it. It sounds so good that it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t a joke. “No, I mean _seeing_ someone.”

 _Her._ “Are you okay?” Hawkeye asks, feeling a little like BJ’s lost his mind. He frowns.

BJ keeps grinning. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says. “I don’t think I’d be here right now if it hadn’t.”

It makes Hawkeye’s mouth dry. “Here in Boston or here in general?”

BJ’s smile weakens into something sad, honest.

Hawkeye can tell what it means. He feels overcome immediately by empathy, concern and by _solidarity_ , upset but feeling bolstered to know that finally, he wasn’t alone in how he felt after the war.

“I haven’t been doing so good,” BJ tells him. “I didn’t say in my letters because I thought if I said everything was great then someday I’d feel like it was.”

“I know,” Hawkeye replies. BJ seems surprised. “That’s why I stopped writing.”

BJ looks at him unhappily.

He swallows. “I was having such a tough time with it,” he says. “And I knew you must be too – there was no way someone like you could leave somewhere like that without it hurting you. But you kept sending me letters about how great Mill Valley was and how much you hoped that we could go for beers sometime soon and I couldn’t do it.”

He nods.

“It felt like you were lying to me,” he continues. “And I know you’ve lied to me before, but it never felt like that.”

“Okay,” BJ replies. Accepting. “I’m sorry.”

He waves off the apology. “If we just sit here naming things to apologise to each other for, we’ll be here all night.”

“I want to be here all night.”

Hawkeye is ready to glare at that, but BJ looks at him so sincerely that he softens. “How are you doing now?”

“A little better. A lot,” he says. “I had done a good job pretending for a long time, that things were okay. But they weren’t. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that happened, everything we saw,” he pauses. “You.”

Hawkeye knows how he feels. He nods.

“I was supposed to be happy. I had got what I wanted, so why wasn’t I?” he continues. “I felt like I was chasing my own memory through my life.” He takes a breath. “Peg and I had this talk a couple of weeks ago. About why I was so unhappy. She took me to meet Marie – that’s her...you know – and everything felt a lot less bad than it had before.”

Hawkeye listens.

“She’s been pressing me to visit ever since you called,” BJ continues. “It was the final straw. I needed to ask you something.”

He bites his cheek. This is like pulling teeth. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

BJ takes a deep breath. “You said you were in love with me,” he says, closes his eyes to do so.

“I did,” Hawkeye confirms weakly.

“Is it true?”

“Is it _true_?” he repeats. “You came all the way here just to ask me that? You could have called.”

“Are you being purposely obtuse?” BJ asks testily.

“Maybe.”

“Hawkeye, I came here because you told me you were in love with me,” he says. “What do you think that means? Will you answer my question?”

Hawkeye grinds his teeth. “Yes.” He doesn’t dare hope. He wonders if BJ came all this way to get some closure before leaving his life forever. “I love you,” he says, trying to prompt BJ to react.

“Okay,” BJ says. “Okay,” he repeats again, under his breath, like it’s only for him. He breaths for a moment, like he’s a kid trying to muster the courage to jump from the bluffs into the sea.

He almost can’t take it. “Beej, if you’re going to hit me, can you get it over with? And aim for my bad side.”

“I’m not-” he replies quickly, looking at Hawkeye with wide eyes. “Hawk, I wouldn’t-” he sounds upset.

Hawkeye regrets the remark immediately. He is screwing this all up. He shifts forward, leaning into BJ’s space and gathers his hands in his own. “I know,” he soothes. “I’m sorry, I know.”

He watches BJ clench his jaw. “I love you,” BJ says. Despite the energy it seems he has expended in getting this far, the words come out effortlessly. BJ looks at him, his blue eyes open and vulnerable. “I love you too, Hawkeye.”

BJ grips his hands like he’s trying to ground them both. Hawkeye stares at their intertwined fingers. BJ extracts one of his hands, brings it up and cups his jaw. Hawkeye can’t help but lean into it, try to wring every ounce of tenderness in his touch. He tilts his head up. BJ looks like he’s asking for something.

Permission.

As if he needs to ask for it – Hawkeye glances down, and BJ leans in the rest of the way.

Hawkeye’s brain short-circuits, but he kisses back before he even realises what he’s doing. BJ is gentle, and despite the coarse moustache, the kiss is soft. Hawkeye grips his hand tightly.

When BJ breaks away, he doesn’t look straight at Hawkeye. He smiles to himself – something small, private, like it isn’t for Hawkeye’s benefit at all. “I love you,” BJ repeats quietly, like a confirmation. A vow to himself.

Hawkeye kisses him again, and BJ seems almost startled. He brings his hand around to the back of BJ’s neck, holding him still to angle his own head – trying to get closer, trying to slot the two of them together the way he thinks they should. BJ sweeps a tongue against his lower lip. Hawkeye is glad he’s sitting down – he thinks he might swoon if he was stood.

They split apart, breathless, and Hawkeye presses their foreheads together. He cups BJ’s face with both of his hands. “I love you,” he tells him finally, face-to-face.

*

BJ lets Hawkeye hold his face for a while.

It’s late, he thinks absently, aware of the darkness outside, though he feels like he’s just woken up.

After a moment, Hawkeye moves. He gets up and gently runs a hand through BJ’s hair. He watches as he drains a half-empty glass of scotch as he sits on the couch. Hawkeye stands in the doorway at the end of the room.

“I’m afraid I only have one bed,” he says. “Only so much a guy like me can afford. I’m sorry you didn’t fall in love with Charles.” Hawkeye is joking but he looks tense. “I can sleep on the couch, if you’re not-”

“No,” BJ blurts, and curses himself for his loudness. “No,” he repeats, softer this time, “it’s okay.”

“Okay, well,” he replies. “Come to bed.”

BJ feels frozen, or like the couch is about to swallow him up. He stands slowly on legs that he’s not sure will hold. There’s a knot of terror inside him – he knows Hawkeye won’t ask him for anything he doesn’t want to give, but BJ worries that he won’t be able to allow himself those things.

As he walks over in a daze, it doesn’t occur to him that Hawkeye is just as nervous as he is.

Hawkeye kisses him again in the doorframe and leads him gradually into the bedroom. Onto the bed.

He kisses Hawkeye again without thought, tenderly and indecently. Hawkeye makes a little noise at the back of his throat, into his mouth, and BJ’s uncertainty falls away. He holds onto him desperately, hands learning – what feels like remembering – Hawk’s body beneath them. He has held his body before – has not wanted to let go before, even pressed a kiss to his neck – but it hadn’t been enough. It has never been enough, and he presses as close as he can and keeps going.

BJ doesn’t know what he is doing – doesn’t know what he should want, how he should act, what is expected of him. He feels free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u for reading!! i rlly appreciate the kudos and comments :-)
> 
> also this is like. done now. so all chapters will be up in the coming days i believe


	5. years gone by and still

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> good morning! here's another one. i'll probs have this all up by the weekend i imagine
> 
> chapter title is from baby can i hold you by tracy chapman

BJ wakes up with the dawn, his arms wrapped around Hawkeye from where they lie in Hawk’s bed. Sunlight hangs lazily in the air through gaps in the curtains, it stretches over the pale sheets of the bed and across Hawkeye’s broad shoulders. Hawkeye’s head is on his chest, his hair pressing lightly against his chin. His arm stretches across BJ’s torso, running up his side with his hand on his shoulder. Their legs are hooked around each other, intertwined like honeysuckle. BJ focuses on how Hawk’s breath warms his skin.

BJ is still. Hawkeye does, gentle and slow, never straying too far away from him but still so alive. It all feels so fast, but it’s been a long-time coming. He feels like _love_ doesn’t even begin to cover it, seems almost cheap. He hopes Hawkeye knows. He vows to make Hawkeye know.

He brings his hand up to cradle the back of Hawk’s head, unfolding across his back, and breathes clearly for what feels like the first time.

He drifts back off into a doze. At some point, Hawkeye presses a kiss to his forehead. At least, he thinks he does – he’s still half-asleep. If he does, it’s a nice kiss.

When he wakes up again, he’s alone but warm, the sheet pulled back over him. BJ runs a hand over the other pillow, finding it still warm. Often, when he wakes up alone, it worries him, but the sound of Hawkeye in the next room soothes him. He can smell eggs cooking. He can hear Hawkeye humming in the kitchen through the thin walls of his apartment.

He gets up and follows his nose.

Hawkeye stands in the kitchen in the same old reddish robe, hand holding a saucepan. He grins when he notices BJ. “It’s no powdered eggs,” he says, “but I hope you’ll stomach it.”

“You don’t have any boiled liver?” he asks, yawning as he heads over.

“Not on Mondays,” Hawk replies.

BJ allows himself a moment of intimacy – he slips his arms around Hawkeye’s waist as he stands behind him and rests his head on his shoulder. Hawkeye leans into it. He remembers back in Korea, when they leant on each other after hours of surgery just to keep the other standing. He’s glad to finally feel that weight again in a better time.

Hawkeye tries to extricate himself after a moment, but BJ doesn’t let him go.

“You’re going to make me burn these,” Hawkeye tells him. Even though BJ can’t see his face he can hear the grin. “Do you really want to reminisce about the mess tent this morning or do you want something edible?”

BJ concedes, letting him go and stepping back. “I’m just amazed you can cook at all,” he remarks.

Hawkeye glances to him with false offence before taking the pan off the stove and showing BJ the two eggs that sit within it. “These are eggs, Beej,” he tells him.

He grabs Hawk’s arm and pulls the pan closer, looking at its contents with false intensity. “They are?” he asks, exaggerating.

Hawkeye rolls his eyes and pulls it back as he starts serving it up. He puts the eggs on top of some toast. “If you’re impressed with eggs, I dread to think what Peg must be putting up with.”

“It’s mutual, neither of us can cook,” he replies.

They sit and eat together. The yolk of the egg splits over the toast.

“When are you leaving?” Hawkeye asks out of the blue.

“Are you asking when you’re getting rid of me?” BJ says with his mouth full.

“I’m asking when you’re leaving.”

BJ shrugs. He hadn’t really planned that far. “I’m off work for the next two weeks,” he says. “I don’t have a plane ticket.”

“Do you think you’ll stay the whole time?” he asks, as if he expects BJ to say no.

He frowns. “I was hoping to.”

“Okay,” Hawkeye nods. He seems pleased. “Well, two weeks in Boston – what do you want to do?”

BJ wants to spend every waking hour with Hawkeye. Every _unwaking_ hour. He wants to tail him around the hospital, go grocery shopping with him, share every meal. BJ wants nothing more from Boston than Hawkeye himself. “I don’t know,” he says instead.

Hawkeye grins. “Neither do I.”

Hawkeye doesn’t have work – he does the next day, but they have this day at least, and they spend the rest of the day in Hawkeye’s apartment, relearning how to live in each other’s space. It seems easy, like nothing has changed, although of course, everything has. BJ calls Peg, apologises for not calling the night before, and tells her he’s there safely. He and Hawkeye walk to buy a couple of bagels for lunch.

Somehow they end up in bed, which is where they spend most of the afternoon.

Later, he showers, and he comes back to hear Hawkeye calling someone.

“Yeah,” he says down the receiver. He leans against the wall. “I’ll be round sometime this week to drop it off. Next couple of days.”

“Who’s that?” BJ asks loudly.

Hawkeye immediately shushes him and makes a cutting throat action. “Who’s that?” he repeats, though he’s clearly speaking to whoever is on the phone. “That’s- that’s no one.” Hawkeye holds the phone slightly away from his ear and winces. BJ can hear a tinny voice. “Yes, yes, I’m a scoundrel and a cad.”

BJ smiles a little at that.

“I’ve got to go. See you soon, Margaret.” He hangs up.

He frowns. “No one?” he questions. He wonders why Hawkeye doesn’t mention him to Margaret, thinks that given a moment he can find something to worry about.

“I want to surprise her,” Hawkeye tells him. “I owe her a book. How do you feel about a little house call tomorrow night?”

He grins. “Great.”

They get takeout, eat so much that BJ thinks he will burst, and sit together on the couch. BJ watches a game show he hasn’t seen while Hawkeye leans against him with a book splayed open. Hawkeye falls asleep on his shoulder and BJ gently takes the book from his hand and creases the top of the page he stopped at. He places it on the coffee table.

*

While Hawkeye is at work, BJ spends his day walking around Boston. He figures he owes it to Hawk to at least try to get his bearings in the city. It’s nice – it feels older than San Francisco, and is certainly colder. He commits Hawkeye’s street to memory and heads off into town.

He ends up at a bookstore.

He thinks Hawkeye has been reading a lot lately – his bookshelf is full, and where on BJ’s sits medical journals, Hawkeye has pages upon pages of literature. He talks about sharing books with Margaret. BJ wants to find him something, but he hasn’t read anything outside of the newspaper and things for work for a long time. He remembers the day he was sent a book in the mail in Korea and they shared it around the camp in torn pages. He misses reading like that.

BJ considers it for a while before asking somebody. He asks a boy in a turtleneck and metal glasses who seems to work there, who looks him up and down when he asks about a gift for a friend and recommends him the poems of Walt Whitman. BJ thinks it’d be a moment Hawkeye would laugh at, although BJ doesn’t get the joke.

He sits on a bench in Boston Public Garden and eats a sandwich. He holds the book under his arm in a brown paper bag, tucked into the winter coat he hasn’t worn in nearly three years.

Massachusetts in nothing like California. BJ wonders how much it is like Maine. He knows Hawkeye hopes to take him to Crabapple Cove sometime, and he hopes it is soon. Whether he is there or not, the place seems such a huge part of Hawkeye that it seems a disservice to him not to know it.

Still, BJ cannot leave California. Not yet, anyway, and not for a long time. Erin still comes first. Hawkeye will understand that, he always has. BJ wants to ask him to come back with him.

It is the first time he really thinks about what he plans for after this trip. It is something he’s always known, didn’t even deem it necessary to think about before he understood it – he wants Hawk to come to California with him. He has to ask. He must.

BJ takes the Whitman anthology out of its bag, flips it open.

_I do not doubt I am to meet you again. I am to see to it that I do not lose you._

He runs his fingers over the print before gently closing it and heading back to Hawkeye’s apartment.

*

BJ has been sitting on the couch working out what to say and bouncing his leg anxiously for at least an hour when Hawkeye gets back. The click of the door sends him standing, awkwardly putting his hands in his pocket, and he opens his mouth to speak.

“Beej,” Hawkeye greets and starts blathering immediately. “I figure we eat early, now, and then head over to Margaret’s. She tends to eat early and I don’t want us to put her off her dinner.” He places his keys down after he closes the door, hanging up his coat. “Don’t let me forget my book,” he says before he looks at BJ where he stands stiffly. He assesses the situation. “What have you done?”

It wasn’t the question BJ was expecting. “What?”

“You look like a guilty dog,” he says. “If I find out you’ve chewed my slippers, I’ll be most unhappy.”

BJ stares at him. “Move to California.”

Hawkeye freezes, staring at him.

“I mean, I think you should move in with me,” he starts. “Peg wouldn’t mind, I think she wants to move out anyway – and if she doesn’t, we have the space anyway. We can stay in the beach house, or- or move into the city, whatever you like.”

Hawkeye keeps looking at him.

“And I’m thinking of going into practice soon anyway, we could do that together,” he rambles. He feels like words are coming out of his mouth faster than he can think of them. “Or you could get a job at the clinic there, or in San Francisco, I mean – Mill Valley isn’t that far a drive from there. Or you don’t even have to live with me! I can help you find somewhere.”

Hawkeye continues to stare, looking like BJ is growing increasingly insane.

“I can’t leave Erin,” BJ tells him, “I know you know that, I can’t. But I don’t want to leave you either. And I have to- I have to ask, I can’t let you pass me by again because I couldn’t get my foot out of my mouth. I’m sorry if you think it’s too fast, or- or you’re not interested, but I had to say it.” He swallows. His heart is in his throat. “There. I’ve said my piece.”

Hawkeye stands in silence for a moment. Then, he laughs. He keeps laughing, and BJ is almost angry at him until he finally manages to speak. “Yes, of course I’ll move to California with you,” he says. “You idiot.”

BJ stands still for a moment as it sinks in. Then, he feels his face split into a grin and he rushes over to embrace Hawkeye. He holds his face still and kisses him firmly on the cheek.

Hawkeye looks at him happily. “Now, did you hear what I said about going to Margaret’s?”

“What?” BJ asks. “I pour my heart out to you, and you’re thinking about Margaret?”

“Beej, we can sort this out any time,” he says. “If I don’t give Margaret this book she’s been asking after for weeks, she won’t leave enough of me to _go_ to California.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty :)


	6. like bookends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!! 
> 
> i'm a firm subscriber of once they sort all their shit out they'll just be happy so. this is that, really. also here's my fun fact of the day the punch bowl was part of the gay scene in 1950s boston! interesting :)
> 
> anyway unbeta'd so do let me know if you spot anything!! chapter title is from old friends by simon and garfunkel

“You should stand further away from me,” Hawkeye tells him when they reach Margaret’s door.

“Don’t want to be seen with me?” he asks, smiling. He takes a few steps back and leans against the wall out of sight, holding Margaret’s book at his side.

“Of course,” Hawk says. “People will talk.” He knocks on the door. 

After a moment, the door opens. “Hawkeye,” Margaret – a wave of warmth passes over BJ at the sound of her voice – says. “You should have called,” she chides, although BJ can tell she doesn’t mean it.

“Thought I’d surprise you,” Hawkeye says.

BJ watches as Margaret ushers him in – she hasn’t noticed him yet – though Hawkeye stands in the doorway to stop her closing the door.

Suddenly, Hawkeye freezes. He pats his pockets dramatically, eyes wide. “Oh, Margaret, you’ll never guess what.”

Margaret gasps. “Oh, you didn’t.”

“I’m afraid I did,” Hawkeye says with a sheepish grin.

He hears a smack against fabric, like Margaret has just slapped Hawkeye’s arm. “I can’t believe you forgot!”

“I can,” BJ says and finally steps forward, appearing behind Hawkeye. He holds the book out to Margaret as Hawkeye steps out of the way.

Margaret looks at him with soft surprise. “Oh,” she says lightly.

“Hi, Margaret,” he says, smiles.

They both step forward and hug – he holds the book behind her back as they do. She holds him tightly, and he turns his head into her hair. Warmth spreads through BJ’s chest. Unlike Hawkeye, who he couldn’t imagine life without, he was never sure if he’d ever see Margaret again.

They let each other go, and Margaret and Hawkeye share a glance. She looks at him questioningly, and he nods. BJ isn’t sure what she is asking, but after it, she draws them both in for a hug, wrapping one arm around each of them.

After it, she closes the door and takes the book out of BJ’s hand. She places it on a side table. “I can’t believe you two would trick me like that,” she says, then frowns. “Actually, I can.”

“Just like old times,” BJ says.

“Don’t remind me, “ Margaret replies good-naturedly. She takes their coats.

Hawkeye turns to her. “Is Jean in?”

Margaret shakes her head. “She’s out. Working late,” she says. “Can I get you two anything? Food?”

BJ shakes his head and places a hand on his stomach. “No thank you, we’ve eaten.”

“I’m about to open some wine,” Margaret states, suggestion obvious.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Hawk says.

He grins. “Oh Margaret, I’ve missed you.”

She rolls her eyes and heads to a cupboard, retrieving three wine glasses. She hands a bottle of red and a corkscrew to BJ and he opens and pours it.

They toast.

“To old friends,” BJ says.

“To peace,” Margaret says.

“To wine!” Hawkeye says.

A few hours later, they’ve drunk about five and a half bottles, have laughed until their ribs hurt, and are sat on the floor. Margaret sits in the middle of the both of them, arms hooked around their shoulders as they lean against the couch.

“This is just like old times,” she says, or slurs.

BJ nods – it is.

Hawkeye claps. “We should see Charles!” he suggests.

“Charles!” BJ cheers, raising his glass and drinking again.

“We should go _out_!” Margaret suggests.

“Out!” he cries and raises his glass once more.

Hawkeye sits upright like a man who thinks he has a good idea. “We should do both!”

“Both!” they all say and clink their glasses together.

They get up, clumsily pulling their coats on. Hawkeye puts his gloves on the wrong way around and leans into BJ as he laughs. Margaret huffs as BJ removes Hawk’s gloves and puts them on correctly.

As they leave, Margaret fumbles with the door key and giggles to herself.

They walk to Charles’ – even knowing that it will take them nearly an hour – arm in arm. BJ doesn’t think he’s done anything like this since college, or at least Korea, stumbling back from the O club. People don’t even stare. They are determinedly ignoring them, in fact.

By the time they get to the house – though BJ thinks _house_ is a little too limited a word – the cold air has softened them a little, but they are by no means sober.

Hawkeye stumbles on the steps and pounds on the door. “Charles, Charles, open up!” he shouts. “Charles, come out to play!”

BJ snickers as Margaret steps past them to ring the doorbell.

The door opens and Hawkeye nearly falls in. The man at the door is not Charles – it is a young man dressed quite smartly. BJ imagines him to be a houseboy or a butler or similar. “Can I help you?”

“You’re not Charles,” Hawkeye states as BJ pulls him upright.

“We’re here to see Charles,” Margaret says carefully. BJ can hear the effort she is putting into speaking clearly. “Is he in? We’re old friends.” The man looks unsure. “From Korea.”

BJ gives his best winning smile as he tries to stop Hawkeye falling on his face. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see us.”

The man looks at all of them, seemingly making a decision. “Follow me,” he concedes after a moment, and BJ can see Hawkeye pump the air with his fist. BJ wonders if the houseboy is getting back at Charles for something.

“Lead on, Jeeves,” Hawkeye says in a British accent.

The houseboy leads them in and lets the door shut behind them. BJ looks up and around, spinning a little. He knew Charles was old money, but _Jesus_. “He’s in his study, you can knock,” he says, and points them in the direction of an old wooden door.

Hawkeye practically skips over to the door. He pounds on it. “Charles, open up! It’s the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future and we want the biggest goose in town!” The door shifts, and Hawkeye jumps back.

Charles appears. He looks at the three of them, looking upwards as if searching for the strength of a higher power.

 _Gentlemen_ , BJ imagines.

“Gentlemen,” Charles says. “Margaret,” he acknowledges.

BJ can’t help himself. “Charles,” he greets and steps unsteadily forward, pulling him into a hug.

To his surprise, Charles doesn’t immediately push him off. Instead, he pats him awkwardly on the back before stepping away. “I must say I’m shocked to see you, Hunnicutt.”

“Good to see you too,” he replies, smacking him on the arm.

Charles flinches and glares at him. “That isn’t what I said.” He rubs his arm. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks, making a point to seem like he doesn’t mean it.

“We’re going out,” Hawkeye tells him and doesn’t elaborate.

“Good for you,” Charles replies. “Why are you in my house?”

“Come with us,” Margaret asks. “It’ll be just like old times!”

“Yes, that’s rather what I’m concerned about,” he replies. “Where?”

Hawkeye and Margaret seem to consider this.

“The Punch Bowl!” she says at last.

Hawkeye seems surprised. “Are you sure?” he asks her in a voice that BJ imagines Hawkeye _thinks_ is quiet. It’s not. He glances at Charles.

“I have no issue with going to The Punch Bowl apart from the fact they don’t have a wine menu,” Charles says to them loudly. Hawkeye seems surprised. BJ still doesn’t know what’s happening. “The company leaves something to be desired as well.” He looks between Hawk and BJ, pointedly avoiding Margaret.

She smiles. BJ assumes she has noticed. “Please,” she asks him.

Charles looks at his watch pointedly and sighs. “Fine,” he gives in. “One drink,” he affirms.

*

Decidedly more than one drink later, the four of them sit in a booth in The Punch Bowl, leaning on either each other or the table for support.

BJ hadn’t immediately noticed what kind of bar this was. It was busy – the bar several people thick, and Margaret slinked off with Charles to find a table. Hawkeye placed a hand on his waist, simple but telling, and BJ had glanced around them in caution.

“It’s okay, Beej,” Hawk told him, “look around.”

So he did. He looked at the hundreds of people in the room. Hundreds of individuals with lives all of their own, just as complex as his. Upon closer inspection – men hanging off other men, women sat on stools playing footsie with each other. He realised then, the pieces coming together, but there were so many people in there he couldn’t believe it.

“All of them?” he asked, looking around.

“Yes,” Hawkeye said, kissed him on the cheek, and headed to the bar to get a drink.

BJ sits in between Hawkeye and Margaret. He leans heavily on Margaret. Hawkeye sits with his arm around BJ’s shoulders, and he has never felt more at ease. He brings his hand up to hold Hawk’s where it rests on his arm.

Charles leans in past their amassed glasses. “You know,” he slurs. “I’m actually quite happy for you.”

“Now I _know_ you’re drunk,” BJ says.

“Why, thank you, Charles. I’m glad we have your endorsement,” Hawkeye declares, but BJ can tell he means it.

“Mine too,” Margaret cries, raising her glass.

Charles points at them vaguely. “What I don’t understand,” he says, “is that I thought you were in love with your wife.”

BJ feels all their eyes turn to him. He feels a little under pressure. Hawkeye squeezes his hand. “I love my wife,” he confirms, “but I’m not in love with her.” It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. It surprises him how clearly it comes out. “And she’s not in love with me.”

“That’s very modern,” Margaret says.

They finish their drinks. The bar seems a lot quieter now – nearing closing, he supposes. BJ finally tunes into the music being played on the piano a few feet away from them. Cole Porter. Hawkeye must too because he straightens and taps BJ.

“Let’s dance,” he asks him.

Hawkeye’s face is close to his, above his own from where he has slouched throughout the evening. He looks dazed from drink and bright. “Yeah, alright,” he agrees and they begin to work their way out of the booth.

“Excuse us,” Hawkeye tells Charles and Margaret, who wave him off. Hawk takes his hand and leads him closer to the piano where a few other couples are dancing.

The song is slow, loosely familiar, though BJ can’t quite place it. He takes Hawk’s left hand in his. “I’ll lead,” he tells him.

“Then you buy,” Hawkeye replies, like he did once before, what feels like a lifetime ago. He slips his arm around his shoulders.

BJ’s never danced with someone almost as tall as him before. He likes it. Something like worry sits at the back of his mind – the fear of being caught – but he eases it by taking Hawkeye by the waist.

Hawkeye is watching him like he can’t quite believe he’s there. BJ knows the feeling.

He loosely remembers dancing with Margaret at his anniversary party. He also remembers choosing to ignore how forlorn Hawkeye had looked then – had wondered whether it was over Margaret, or if it were a door to something BJ didn’t want to think about. He finds himself feeling guilty over it – knowing what he knows now – and leans his head against Hawkeye’s as they sway.

By the time the song ends, Hawkeye has his head on BJ’s shoulder.

Closing time comes not long after, and the four of them step out into the cold air of the night. Charles announces that he is finding a cab and he shakes BJ’s hand and hugs Margaret.

Hawkeye follows Charles as he walks away. BJ watches them talk a little, though he can’t hear, watches them glance back to him and Margaret. Hawkeye says something and Charles nods. They shake hands and Hawkeye pulls him in for a hug, one arm around his back for a moment before they part ways. Hawk jogs back to re-join them.

“Shall we?” Hawk says.

“What were you two talking about?” Margaret asks as they start walking.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hawkeye tells her, but he glances at BJ with a nod. _Tell you later_.

They walk her home, taking her all the way up to her apartment and leaving her at the door. Hawkeye holds the elevator as BJ says goodbye.

Margaret hugs him again and kisses his cheek. “Thank you,” she says.

“What for?” he asks

She glances at Hawkeye. He understands, nods, and says goodnight.

“Onwards,” Hawkeye says as he joins him in the elevator.

BJ bumps his shoulder against Hawk’s. “What were you talking to Charles about?”

“I told him I was leaving,” he says, “and to see Margaret more.” They step out of the elevator and into the night. “I said I’ll send him a postcard with an address to keep in touch.”

BJ smiles. However much he knows Hawkeye wishes the war never happened, it did, and he’s glad Hawkeye has decided to reach out to their friends. He wonders if a couple more of those postcards would make their way to other members of the 4077. He plans to ask Margaret for some addresses before he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll post the last two chapters tomorrow seeing as one is the final chapter and the other is an epilogue so it's not really worth waiting for :) thank you for reading!


	7. people in motion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised - the final two :)
> 
> chapter title from san francisco by scott mckenzie

The day BJ leaves, it’s early, and he has to shake Hawkeye awake. He has already packed, quietly folded his clothes and arranged his suitcase more neatly than it had been when he arrived. He snuck out to buy Hawkeye a breakfast bagel, planning to eat his own in the cab to the airport.

The two weeks BJ has been in Boston have been the best of BJ’s life. He longs to see Erin. The two go together.

BJ hesitates in waking him – it isn’t like last time, he knows he’ll be seeing Hawkeye again soon, not least because he has spent the last week getting his affairs in order. BJ has listened to him call his father about visiting soon and discuss leaving with his boss. He has said goodbye to Margaret on his own. BJ has two torn sheets of her writing folded safely into a book in his bag with numerous addresses. He is going to try harder, and make sure Hawkeye does too.

He has vowed to be better, which is why he wakes him.

Years ago, BJ did something he’d promised himself not to – he left Hawkeye without a word. He left nothing but an unused pen and a blank sheet in The Swamp. At the time, he’d felt guilty over that almost worst of all – Hawkeye having to discard them, or see that it had crossed BJ’s mind to leave him something and he simply hadn’t done it. That is, if he came back to the 4077 at all. BJ hoped he would, despite wishing more than anything that Hawkeye could go home – he couldn’t bear to think that Hawkeye had lost his mind for good.

BJ spent years trying to live up to, out-do, override Trapper in Hawkeye’s memory. He left with far more sympathy for the man. _There’s just too much to say._

Despite everything, he thinks he’s done it – live up to and out-do Trapper. He doesn’t think Hawkeye would appreciate his fixation on it, but he’s always been competitive. There is still too much to say, but it doesn’t mean he’ll say nothing. He won’t repeat the past.

“I hate to wake you just to say goodbye,” he says as Hawkeye grumbles about being pulled out of his slumber. BJ sits on the side of the bed.

“Five more minutes,” Hawk mumbles.

BJ shakes him gently again. “Hawk, I have a plane to catch,” he whispers.

Hawkeye opens his eyes blearily and sits up. “You’re going?”

“Afraid so,” he replies and smiles softly.

“I’ll come with you,” Hawk says and moves like he’s going to haul himself out of bed.

BJ holds him still. “No, don’t,” he says gently. “I want to say goodbye to you properly.”

He yawns. “By all means.”

“Goodbye, Hawkeye,” he says and kisses him. He takes Hawk’s face in both of his hands, feels Hawkeye’s hands wrap around his middle loosely, and tries to commit the feeling of his lips to his memory. As if he hasn’t done so already. They break apart and he gently brushes the pad of his thumb against Hawkeye’s cheek. “See you soon.”

Hawkeye beams. “Not soon enough.”

BJ kisses him again, deeply. He nips at his lips, working his way to his neck and pushing him back onto the bed. He considers, briefly, missing his flight.

“Beej,” Hawk gasps. “BJ, plane.”

He sucks a hickey onto Hawkeye’s neck and pulls back. He grins. “Something to remember me by,” he says and stands, heading to leave.

Hawkeye sits up on his elbows, pupils blown wide. “You tease! You fiend!” he says. “What am I meant to do now?”

“There’s always a cold shower,” BJ replies and opens the bedroom door.

Hawkeye throws a pillow at him. “Go!” he says. “I can’t look at you anymore.”

BJ keeps grinning and leaves the room.

“Beej!” he shouts, and BJ pokes his head back around the door. “Have a safe flight,” Hawkeye says kindly.

“See you, Hawk,” BJ replies and goes.

The cab journey and in turn the plane journey are almost bittersweet, but he is filled, more than he has been for a long time, with hope.

Leaving Hawk aches, as it always does. Despite it, he feels himself almost vibrating with excitement. He can’t wait to see Erin again and to tell Peg about his trip. He can’t wait to finally know where he’s going and be able to sort everything out properly with Peg. He can’t wait for the sound of Hawkeye’s car outside his window in a month’s time.

He cannot wait – at last – for the future to arrive.

*

Hawkeye finishes work a couple of weeks later with a pat on the shoulder from the chief physician of the hospital and a glowing reference wherein remarks on his character have been bribed into omission. He is catching the Greyhound to Maine tomorrow, where he will see his father and pick up his beat-up 1949 Ford. Most of his things sit in boxes in his apartment, ready for him to collect. From there, the 50-hour trip from Boston to Mill Valley.

He’s never been so excited to sit in his car for three days straight.

He visits Margaret that final day, brings her a bottle of wine to make up for at least some of the sheer quantity of her own that he’s drunk recently.

“I’m moving to California,” he tells her almost immediately, not wanting to have it hanging over their heads.

Tears well in her eyes, but she doesn’t cry. “I just got you back,” she says.

“It’s your fault, you know,” Hawkeye says kindly. “If you hadn’t told me to speak to BJ, I’d have stuck around.”

“But you would have been miserable,” she comments.

“Maybe,” he replies. Then, sincerely, “Thank you.”

Margaret reaches up on the tips of her toes to hug him and places a hand on the back of his head. He wraps his arms around her waist and holds her close. He lets himself enjoy being held by a friend. When she lets him go, she kisses him on the cheek. “You’re welcome.”

Hawkeye nods.

“You better keep in contact this time,” she says sternly, pointing like she’s giving an order.

 _Just like old times_ , Hawkeye thinks. “You’ll never get rid of me.”

“Good,” she replies.

*

The coach ride is long and Hawkeye has seen all the countryside before, many times, but he savours every moment. He considers what he will tell his father.

Daniel Pierce is, in Hawkeye’s expert opinion, a great father. He is also smart. Hawkeye thinks if he tells him he is moving to California for the weather, his father will see straight through it. He would ask about BJ right away and question why Hawkeye deems it necessary to move 3000 miles across the country for an old army buddy. Hawkeye doesn’t have an answer for that, which would tell him enough.

If he finds out, Hawkeye isn’t sure what will happen. He doesn’t think Daniel would approve per se – a simple by-product of being born before the turn of the century – but he doesn’t believe anything would come of that. Daniel has always been a proponent of unconditional love. Hawkeye doesn’t know if that unconditional love has a limit.

Daniel greets him at the coach stop with a wide smile, embracing his son. Hawkeye leans in, breathing deep, letting the feeling of his father’s arms around him overwhelm him. Daniel takes his bags even though Hawkeye insists he shouldn’t.

“Nonsense,” Daniel says as he loads up the car.

The drive isn’t so long and the sun hangs low in the sky. It bathes the landscape in a golden-pink light. Hawkeye takes in the image, enjoying seeing Maine again. He listens to his father hum along to the radio.

They pull up outside the house and head in. It no longer feels so cramped, so closed in, as it had when he had left for Boston.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Daniel asks as he makes them coffee.

Hawkeye shrugs. “Can’t a guy just pay a visit to his father?”

Daniel gives him a long-suffering look. “You forget how well I know you,” he says. “Something’s on your mind.”

He allows this and nods. “Will you sit down?” he asks.

“In a minute,” he replies.

In a minute, he sits and places the coffee between them.

“Out with it, then,” Daniel tells him.

Hawkeye takes a deep breath. “I’m moving,” he says. “To Mill Valley.”

Daniel stares at him.

“In California,” he specifies.

“I know where it is, Hawkeye, every letter you sent when you got back went there,” he replies. He leans back in his chair, considering what Hawkeye has told him. “Did you see BJ?”

Hawkeye feels a little like all his blood has drained to his feet. “Yes.”

“Are you moving there for him?” he asks.

He nods.

“To be with him?”

It could, if Hawkeye was being particularly – purposely – slow, be interpreted in a different way. He knows what Daniel means. The implications are there. He feels his mouth go dry. “Yes,” he answers again.

Daniel nods. “Okay,” he replies after a beat.

He almost can’t believe his ears. “Okay _?_ ” he repeats. “ _Okay?_ ”

“What do you want me to say, Hawkeye?” his father asks. The nickname sounds easy. Normal.

“I don’t know,” he replies, exasperated. “Maybe how you’re disappointed, or- or maybe quote some scripture-”

“When have you ever known me to quote scripture?” Daniel interrupts.

Hawkeye knows he never has. “I thought you’d be more upset.”

“Would you like me to be upset?”

“No, of course not!” he practically shouts. “Why don’t you care more about this?”

“Of course I care,” he replies. He leans forward and takes a sip of his coffee. “You remember when they declared you dead?” he says lightly, though Hawkeye can tell it still upsets him. “When they told me you’d died because of some paperwork mishap?”

Hawkeye nods, not entirely sure where he’s going with it.

“After that, everything seems rather small,” Daniel continues. “I couldn’t bear to lose you again. Maybe it’s not the choice I’d have made, or the one I’d hoped you would make – but you’re more important to me than any of that.”

He swallows thickly.

“So it’s okay, Ben,” he says. He reaches out across the table and pats the back of Hawkeye’s hand.

Hawkeye feels his eyes brim with tears that he refuses to let fall. He blinks them away quickly and takes a long sip of his coffee.

Daniel must notice, but he doesn’t mention it. He waits for Hawkeye to compose himself. After a moment’s silence, he asks, “What do you want for dinner, then?”

In the end, they settle for soup. It reminds Hawkeye of his youth, of getting home from playing in the Maine snow and sitting around their stove with a mug of tomato soup in his freezing hands.

He checks his car still works, pulling off the tarp and shaking off the frost and dirt. It does, thankfully – the engine starts and the radio crackles into action. Hawkeye grins as he turns it back off and heads inside.

Much of the evening he spends in comfortable silence with his father, listening to old records. Daniel hasn’t caught on to the television thing just yet. He goes to bed in his childhood bedroom and he can’t sleep, like a kid before their birthday. _Tomorrow,_ he thinks.

*

In the end, he leaves at 6 a.m. to head back to Boston, wakes his father by purposely making a lot of noise. He gets a hug goodbye before he hops in the car and starts up the engine.

“Call me when you get there,” Daniel tells him. “And don’t forget to sleep!”

Hawkeye waves him off from the window and leaves.

He reaches Boston a few hours later, hurriedly packs all of his things into the car and leaves before he can get a parking violation.

The drive is long – he knew it would be, and it’s made all the longer by knowing what lies at the end of it. The first night, he stops somewhere between Indianapolis and Cincinnati in a dodgy motel when he simply cannot drive anymore. It has been about 18 hours since he set off that morning.

He dreams of BJ. Of sun and a home and a family. For the first time in a long time, he dreams of settling down.

Hawkeye is back on the road shortly after the sun comes up, pumped full of coffee and determination to get as far as he can before he passes out without breaking any major traffic laws. He turns up the radio and sings loudly, shifting in his seat to encourage some blood flow to his legs.

He makes it as far as Wyoming – on the way out of Wyoming, he hopes, once again arriving at another motel around midnight. He considers calling BJ then, but it’s late, and as far as Hawkeye knows Erin and Peg are still there.

Hawk thinks about what it will be like to surprise BJ and barely sleeps. He remembers the catnaps they all used to take between a particularly heavy batch of casualties. He feels reassured that he at least sleeps more than he did then, and by the fact that soon, he will rest easy with BJ in his arms.

He is up at dawn once more. He figures he should be at BJ’s that evening.

*

The month BJ spends without Hawkeye is long, long like they used to be in Korea. Regardless, he takes each day with growing anticipation. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, BJ recalls.

When he told Peg, she hugged him gleefully.

They agree, for now, not to divorce. The paperwork would be difficult for one, but BJ also knows it would likely be better for Peg to be, on paper, married. They plan to live apart, share Erin between their homes, Peg moving in with Marie like she’s wanted for a while and BJ keeping the house overlooking the beach.

The last night before Peg moves out, they raise a toast to each other and take off their wedding rings.

BJ helps Peg move her things over. He keeps Waggles, both of them deciding it would be better for the old dog to stay away from Marie’s cats. Both of them wave happily at the neighbours who poke their heads out of cars as they pass. BJ is glad they’re a little out the way, the house on the hill at the edge of the residential area.

The only real sadness comes when he watches Erin wave him off from Marie’s doorstep. He holds back his tears and, for a moment, curses his softness. Then, he waves, and lets the tears fall. He knows he’ll see her – he’ll see her every weekend, every evening he wishes to visit her, sometimes a week or so when he has the time off.

BJ knows, deep down, it’ll be better for her to have two happy parents living apart than two miserable ones stuck together.

When BJ comes back alone, he knows there are eyes on him from the people who live nearby. He doesn’t care.

The days draw on, and he calls Hawkeye a couple of times and they try desperately not to run up each other’s phone bills. Hawk tells him the day he finishes work that he will be heading to Maine the next day, so not to call.

BJ spends the next few days looking at the calendar like a clock, as if it could change while he wasn’t looking. He wonders if Hawkeye will call from the road someplace, knows he must be out there across the continent somewhere. BJ doesn’t think he will. BJ wouldn’t.

The day starts normally. On all accounts, it is a normal day.

He wakes up, he goes to work, he comes home. He eats a TV dinner and tunes into the radio. The sun sets.

BJ can hear the rumble of an engine getting closer. At first, he thinks it’s going past, but it isn’t. When he hears it stop, he stands – rushes to the window, looks out into the dusk. On his drive sits a neglected blue Ford, and in that Ford, sits Hawkeye.

He rushes out, leaving the door wide open.

Hawkeye stands on his driveway with a grin on his face. “Howdy stranger,” he says, repeats BJ’s line.

They meet in the middle, both stepping towards each other at the same time. Hawkeye wraps his arms around him once more and BJ does the same. He feels Hawk cradle the back of his head like he does. It feels like how they parted ways in Korea, except nothing like it at all. That was an ending.

This feels like a beginning.


	8. tomorrow is my turn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just a little epilogue kinda thing
> 
> title from the nina simone song

The sun is warm on his back. BJ wakes slowly, in and out for a while, and even when he rouses he still feels like he’s dreaming. He stretches out his arm to find the sheets next to him cold. He feels more awake then.

As if on cue, Hawkeye saunters into the room. “Morning,” he announces loudly.

Recently, Hawkeye has taken it upon himself to serve as an alarm clock when BJ sleeps in. Months ago – it used to be nicer, BJ muses, all hands and mouths and gentle touch, but now it just annoys him. He loves it.

“It’s Wednesday. We have the day off,” Hawkeye tells him like he doesn’t know.

“Do we?” he deadpans.

“You should get up and eat,” he says. “You said we could go to the beach today.”

BJ reluctantly rolls out of bed. “What happened to those days when you made me breakfast?”

Hawkeye swishes out of the room. “Ah, the follies of youth,” he says.

He follows Hawk out and downstairs and pours himself some cereal. Hawkeye has already made him coffee and it sits on the counter waiting for him. He drinks it readily. Hawkeye passes him briefly to collect the latest letter from Margaret and kisses him casually as he does. After, BJ showers and gets dressed.

“We should go to the movies,” Hawkeye says.

“As well as the beach?” he asks. “Why the urgency to do so much today? You’re just like Erin.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replies.

BJ smiles. He does know why Hawkeye wants to do things – it’s been a while since they both had the day off and had the day to themselves. Most of their shared vacation days are weekends and are dedicated to Erin. They’re some of the happiest days of BJ’s life, but maybe they’ve been neglecting each other a little. “You just want to see _Some Like It Hot_ again,” he says.

“And?” Hawkeye asks, slightly cattily.

BJ rolls his eyes. “Come on, lover,” he replies, and begins getting his things. 

They saunter through the day slowly, driving into the city and spending time doing nothing at all except be in each other’s company. They do go to the theater and BJ complains for no reason at all except wanting to speak to Hawkeye. In the darkness, they lean into each other.

Somewhere deep inside BJ, he had worried that if Hawkeye had moved in, they’d have been set on the same ill-fated path they had been when he had first met him at the airport bar in Korea. That years down the line, it would all fall apart, just as painfully, if not more so.

Hawkeye has lived with him – or more accurately, the two of them have lived together – for more years now than their entire time together in Korea. BJ considers that a good sign.

Hawk laughs loudly at the movie even though he’s heard them all before, and BJ laughs mostly because Hawkeye is laughing. They share the same popcorn and sometimes their fingers brush against each other’s in the box.

When the movie ends they break apart reluctantly and leave. Hawkeye talks his ear off about Marilyn Monroe on the way out, and BJ listens to every word despite barely caring. They eat street food and head to the beach.

They hold their shoes in their hands. The sand beneath their toes is warm. Early spring is slightly more quiet than usual, no influx of tourists. It’s BJ’s favourite time of year. As they walk, he brushes his fingers against Hawkeye’s, as close as they can get to holding hands in this part of town.

Hawkeye leads them someway up the beach before he stops and breathes the sea air. He sits, so BJ sits next to him.

The sun is setting. It hangs just above the ocean, its light rippling in the water, amber and warmth among the blue.

“Isn’t it funny how this is the same sunset as everyone else’s?” Hawkeye says. “My dad saw this sunset a few hours ago. So did Margaret, and Charles, and everyone else behind us.”

BJ glances at Hawk. “What’s got you waxing lyrical?”

Hawkeye shrugs. “I ran out of stupid things to say half an hour ago.”

“I thought it’d never happen,” he replies.

Hawkeye grins at him. The sunset makes the silver in Hawkeye’s hair seem golden.

“I wish I could hold you,” BJ states lightly.

Hawkeye hums in agreement. He looks down the beach. No one is close enough to see them in detail, only to see them indistinctly like the background of a painting. Hawkeye moves in closer and presses their shoulders together. He takes BJ’s hand and intertwines their fingers. The sand shapes around them.

Night comes slowly and they sit together the whole time.

It’s nice. BJ makes sure any time they spend at the beach is nice. He’s never told Hawkeye that – that he still thinks about how Hawkeye must remember that _one_ particular day at the beach, the one that pulled the rug out from under them. BJ loves the beach dearly, and he hopes that one day Hawkeye can love it as much as he does. So he makes sure every memory they form there is a good one.

He makes sure they never argue there. They argue a lot, rarely seriously, but he makes sure it never happens on the beach. He makes sure the day is always nice, the sun high in the sky, and there are never too many people around. He tries to make sure they go alone so he can control the variables. When Erin was smaller, when she was barely more than a toddler, he never took her and Hawkeye to the beach at the same time.

Hawkeye shifts uncomfortably. BJ thinks he too must have reached the threshold for the acceptable amount of sand to have in one’s pants. BJ glances around again – no one is near, no one is watching – and kisses Hawk on the cheek.

They head home, sing to the radio together and shower when they get in.

“Thank you,” Hawkeye says later, in bed.

“What for?” BJ asks, turning to face him.

Hawkeye brushes a hand through his hair. “Today.”

He smiles. “Thank _you_.”

Hawk’s brow furrows. “What for?”

“Tomorrow,” he replies. “Every day.”

“I bet you think that’s romantic,” Hawkeye says, leaning in to kiss him.

He kisses back and then smiles against Hawk’s lips. “Yes,” he says.

“Are you always going to try and out-do me?”

He smiles wider. “Yep.”

Hawkeye pushes him onto his back and climbs on top. He kisses him, slowly at first, then more deeply. BJ makes a sound in the back of his throat that’s happened enough times that he’s no longer embarrassed about it. “How about in this?” Hawkeye says, pulling back.

“I’ll think about it,” BJ replies.

BJ’s hands come up to Hawkeye’s waist, where they belong. He holds Hawk’s warm body in his hands and in his arms, in their house, in their bed and finally – finally, it feels like a home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you SO much for reading :-) much love to you all. i wrote this in the space of about a week so hopefully it doesn't seem too rushed. fixating will do that to you i suppose.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from bruce springsteen's badlands :)
> 
> also you can find me [here](https://springsteens.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if u so fancy!


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